


And Here's To You

by babyblueavenger



Series: Mystery Nerds AU [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 1970s Attitudes Towards Mental Health, A trans joke that's in bad taste because Stan is a product of his time, Abuse, Addiction, Brief mention of JimStan, Brief mention of Stanchez, Drug Abuse, Implied Sexual Content, Mental Health Issues, Mental Hospitals, Ripley being an adorable wee scamp, Suicide Attempt, Young Grunks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 13:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5872963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyblueavenger/pseuds/babyblueavenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seems that, even when the Pines brothers make some progress, they always hit another snag. </p><p>This was all because of that damn pill bottle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Here's To You

**Author's Note:**

> This came about after I saw a post talking about Grunkle Stan's "loony days" in the Guide to Nonstop Fun. I had to do something with it. There was no other choice. Even if it meant once again putting my beloved grunks through the ringer. 
> 
> Oh, who am I kidding, that's my favorite thing to do.

The little orange bottle fell out of the duffel bag, and hit the floor with a small clatter. Ford looked down at it, his eyebrow raised in a curious arch.

Stan had brought the duffel bag with him when he first came out to Gravity Falls, into which he’d stuffed all his worldly possessions when his brother’s postcard came. It had just been sitting in his newly-furnished room for at least three weeks, so Ford decided to do something about it. He’d asked Stan while he shaved that morning if there was anything in it he’d like to keep. Stan had replied only the two pairs of jeans he’d shoved into it, everything else could be tossed out. According to Stan, nothing else in the bag was fit to be worn in public. Ford had laughed and gone to complete his task.

That should have been the end of it. No fuss, no muss. All normal.

And then that damn bottle fell out.

Ford bent down and picked it up. It was a bottle for prescription drugs, the kind you get at the pharmacy. It had no address or pharmacy name on it. He didn’t recognize the name of the drug, typed on the bottle in crisp typewriter script on a label yellowed with time, nor the name of the person the medicine was for - “Dale Oaks”. 

After a minute of thought, Ford realized that was probably one of the many aliases Stan had gone by over the last ten years. Based on his many stories, Stan was no longer allowed in almost half the country. And maybe parts of South America. The details of that were still kind of foggy on that. So he created numerous false names and identification to make his life a little easier. Stan never thought it pertinent to tell Ford whatever happened to any of those fake ID’s and passports, but that was beside the point. 

Knowing that the bottle belonged to Stan under a fake name did not make Ford feel more comfortable about it. Not in the slightest. What was Stan doing with prescription medication? Was there something Ford didn’t know? He knew that Stan had the scare with the pneumonia and possibly something worse, but what if there was more? Helen hadn’t said anything about it the last time Stan had been in for a check-up. How well could you hide something like that from a doctor?

Ford felt an odd coldness creep over him as he considered an alternative. What if these weren’t for any disease? What if Stan just had them to take, like those guys Ford saw in college who would pop caffeine pill after caffeine pill, in hopes of staying awake just long enough to finish their final project. The bottle was empty, but that didn’t necessarily mean Stan hadn’t been using whatever was in it. What if he’d just recently run out?

Ford’s thoughts swirled around his head, and no matter how he tried to organize them, they would not obey him. He just kept coming back to one thought - what if Stan was an addict? 

Stan had spent ten years on his own, getting involved with all sorts of unsavory types. It wasn’t a massive leap in logic. 

He didn’t have time to panic further, as Stan appeared in the doorway, wiping at his freshly shaven face with a towel. “What did I tell you, Sixer? Some pretty gross stuff in there, right,” he said, walking up to his brother, his green bathrobe swinging around the knees of his flannel pajama bottoms. Ripley came bounding in behind him, her tongue lolling out and her tail wagging furiously. She immediately ran over to the pile of clothes Ford had dumped out of the duffel bag, and stuck her nose in for a sniff. Evidently, the smell was too much, even for a puppy that used to forage for food in the garbage. She snuffed unhappily, then grabbed an old pair of boxers in her teeth and began chewing on them with incredible, murderous vengeance. 

Stan laughed and said, “Hey, ain’t like you smell much better, freeloader.” 

Ripley yipped through the boxer fabric still in her teeth before happily returning to mauling them.

Ford straightened up, pill bottle still clutched in hand, and turned to face his brother. He tried to keep his tone even as he held out the bottle and said, “Do you mind telling me what this is?”

Well, at least he’d tried to keep his tone even. He realized too late just how accusatory it sounded. 

Stan’s expression was one of genuine surprise, and that threw Ford for a loop for a moment. A small, hopeful part of him hoped that maybe this was all one big misunderstanding. The bottle didn’t belong to Stan at all and he was just being paranoid and silly.

Stan reached out and took the bottle out of his hand, examining it as if it were some kind of rare treasure that needed to be authenticated. 

“Huh…” Stan muttered finally. “Thought I got rid of this. Don’t know why it’s still in there.”

He casually tossed it back to Ford, who currently felt his stomach dropping into his feet. So the bottle did belong to Stan, and all the questions that still flittered about in his mind needed answers. Worst of all, something about Stan’s tone, the casual way he just dismissed the bottle and what it implied, made Ford more than a little edgy. “Stan, what is this stuff,” he demanded.

“Estrogen,” Stan said, his tone and face still flippant. “I’m gonna become a woman. Call me Estelle from now on, okay?”

“This isn’t a joke, Stan,” Ford said, feeling anger spiking. “This is serious. You’ve been using whatever this stuff is under my roof, and I’m not gonna tolerate it.”

Stan’s shot him a sharp gaze and furrowed his brow in annoyance as he said, “Hey, I haven’t taken that stuff in a long, long time, Ford. I just left the bottle in my bag.”

When Ford rolled his eyes, Stan’s brow furrowed even further. “What, you don’t believe me?”

“Come on, Stan. You just left the bottle in there after supposedly not using it for years? That’s the weakest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, well, tough luck, Poindexter, because it’s the truth.”

“I feel like I’d have an easier time believing you if you would just tell me what this stuff is,” Ford said, squeezing the little orange bottle in a fist by his side. The lid was digging so deeply into his palms that it was threatening to leave marks. He didn’t even care that he was getting angrier. Why couldn’t Stan just answer this simple question, especially if he had nothing to hide? All this was doing was making him look more guilty. Surely he had to realize that.

“You’re so smart, why don’t you go figure it out,” Stan said tersely, turning away from Ford and moving to his dresser. He yanked open the top drawer and started pulling out socks and underwear, tossing them over his shoulder so they landed on the bed. He slammed it shut, then yanked open the drawer beneath it, pulling out a pair of jeans, a new pair that Ford had bought him when he’d realized Stan barely had any that weren’t falling apart. 

“Stan, why are you being so evasive about this?” 

“Because you’re being a nosy prick,” Stan shot back. “Look, I think I’ve made it pretty clear I don’t want to talk about this. There’s just some stuff you don’t need to know, okay?”

“I need to know if my brother is a goddamn drug addict, Stan!”

“And I told you, I’m not,” Stan shouted. His eyes were alight with anger. “You don’t want to believe me, fine. Not like I’m surprised that you don’t want to listen to me, even if I’m telling the truth. So why don’t you just go figure out what was in that damn bottle, once again make your own assumptions about me, and leave me the alone?”

“Stan…”

“You hard of hearing, or something? I said get the hell out!” Stan’s fisted were clenched by his sides.

Memories of the hospital traipsed about in Ford’s mind, not helped at all by that same look of betrayed anger in Stan’s eyes. He fought the pain they brought on as he turned and stomped out of the room.

This was different. He had a reason to be angry at Stan. 

He repeated that to himself all the way down the hall and to his study.

\--------------------

Even though Ford was gone, Stan didn’t let the tension leave his shoulders. Didn’t let the anger inside him burn out. It was better than facing the alternative. 

He took long strides to go over to his door, and, sending all his fury forward, he slammed it shut. The sudden noise startled Ripley out of her boxer-chewing euphoria, and she looked up at him, her one limp ear bouncing a bit. 

Stan fought to hold on to his anger. He had to. Ford had no goddamn right. Stan had told him he could toss out some old clothes, not rifle through this things and find stuff that Stan did his best to hide away and forget about. And he really had thought he’d gotten rid of that stupid bottle. He really did just forget it was there. That didn’t make him a drug addict. 

At least, not anymore. 

The thought came quickly and Stan gave his head a hard shake to chase it away. 

He would not let this get to him. He would not.

But slowly, surely, the thoughts began to trickle in. Like water from a broken dam, it started with a few spurts - images and sounds - then chipped away at his mental defenses so more and more could rush in and consume him. Soon, it filled his mind in torrents. There wasn’t enough anger in his body to keep him afloat. 

He turned and walked back over to his bed, and sat heavily. He heard Ripley’s tiny claws click against the floor as she trotted over to her master. She came into view, looking up at him with her wide, watery eyes, and set her head on her master’s knee. 

Stan reached up limply and gave her a good scratch behind the ears. 

“1973 was a bad year, sweetheart,” he said. 

Ripley snuffed and licked the air.

God, he really wanted a cigarette.

\--------------------

The room is the color of eggshells. Everything in it is. When they first brought him here from the regular hospital, he thought he’d gone colorblind for a minute. 

The only reassurance that he hadn’t is the pink, puffy scar on his arm, stitched up and hidden away under a mummy’s worth of bandages. It aches and pulses like a living thing when he pulls the bandages back, just for a look, just to make sure. He traces his finger down it, and though it sends a shiver of pain through him, he doesn’t stop himself until he’s outlined every stitch the doctors have made. 

He hardly remembers making the decision to slice himself up. He doesn’t think he made a conscious decision to die, even though he thought about it a lot. But he remembers grabbing that bit of broken bottle and trailing it down his arm anyway.

Seemed to him something only a crazy person would do. 

The plump, scowling nurse that brings him dinner that first night gets testy when she sees that his bandages are off. She huffs and clucks like an offended schoolmarm, grumbling about wasted time and effort and how this place was going to be the death of her. He just stares after her as she shuffles off, then comes back a few minutes later with another roll of gauze and some tape. She roughly grabs the wrist of his exposed arm, clamping down with a strong grip that doesn’t fit her build in the slightest. He feels sharp fingernails dig into his flesh. He won’t be surprised if it leaves a bruise. He fights not to make an involuntary sound of pain as she twists his arm to get the bandage around, and wonders how many other people she’s bruised in a similar way. 

She finishes wrapping his arm up again, hiding the scar away beneath more eggshell white. As soon as she releases his wrist, he pulls it back close to him. It feels a little sore, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. 

“Don’t let me catch you doing that again,” she clucks. She even wags her finger at him like he’s a naughty little kid caught shooting spit balls, instead of a twenty-year-old man picking at his bandages. “We do have rules, you know. And Dr. O’Neill would give you a much worse punishment than I ever could.”

He knows that last bit was supposed to sound scary, but he can’t find it in himself to be afraid. Instead, he looks up at her face, traces the lines and folds with his eyes. She doesn’t have much in the way of a neck, her blubbery chin just kind of dropping to her chest, next to a nametag that reads “Mildred”. It makes her head look like it’s fastened on with glue or something. Kick her too hard, and it’s liable to come off, bouncing down the hall, clucking and scolding away about what a day this was, indeed. 

She huffs again, and turns briskly on her heels. “Crazy hippy…” he hears her mumble as she walks out, shutting the door a little louder than he figured was professional of her. 

The scar still throbs under the bandages, now compounded with a raw bruise and marks from fingernails. He doesn’t dare pick at the bandages again. 

\-----------------------

Ford pulled out three more books, glanced over them, and tossed them aside when he realized they weren’t what he wanted.

Dammit, he knew he had a medical journal in here somewhere. He’d bought it for some light reading one summer while he was cataloguing rock monster migration patterns. Giant creatures like that moved slowly, so you had to fill the time somehow. 

He tossed a book on dowsing over his shoulder. It landed in a stack of papers and sent them flying. He didn’t care. 

He had to figure out what pills had been in the little orange bottle currently tucked into his pants pockets. If Stan wouldn’t act like an adult and tell him, he would figure it out for himself. So there. 

Now if only he could find that freaking book! In the back of his mind, he sincerely hoped it hadn’t been in that box that had caught fire when he first tried out a new shaving technique. Fiddleford had been so mad at him after he’d doused the box and part of their former sofa with the first extinguisher from under the kitchen sink. Ford had a perfectly good razor, why didn’t he just use that?! 

Ford had merely scoff and said his way was much faster. He was starting to regret it.

He tugged two more books of the shelf - a history of witchcraft in Northern Europe and a 1833 farmer’s almanac. Useless. He tossed them to the side. The farmer’s almanac landed on one of Ripley’s toys, that let out a pathetic death throe of a squeak. 

The shelf over his desk was starting to get sparse. Only six more books remained from the thirty that had originally been on it. Ford quickly tugged them off, scanned the covers, and threw them away.

Finally, he scanned the last book - a hardback first edition of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. He gently set this one back on the shelf, being careful not to damage the spine. 

He sighed and sat down in his desk chair. He supposed he could always go down to his private study and see if the medical journal was there, but he just didn’t have the energy. 

There was a part of him that knew he could have handled the situation upstairs a little better. Maybe not lost his temper or acted like he’d walked in on Stan shooting up heroin or something. 

He just…he honestly hadn’t been able to help it. The idea that Stan might be doing something like this, and was being so evasive about it and wouldn’t tell him the truth…what the hell was he supposed to think, after all…just forgot to throw it out, his foot…this was going to be the death of him, he knew it.

“God…” he muttered. “I’m turning into Mom.”

He felt the pill bottle being squished against his thigh, his pants pocket to small to hold it properly. With an annoyed huff, he fished it out of his pocket, and found himself staring at it, scanning over the fake name and the strange drug name he’d never heard of. 

Then suddenly, it dawned on him - Helen was a doctor. If anyone knew anything about medicine, it was her. He glanced up at the wall clock. It was almost three, and today was Sunday. He got to his feet and headed to the kitchen, hoping she was home. 

He got to the phone, and with shaking fingers he punched in her phone number and waited through two rings. 

A young, lazy-sounding voice answered, “Hello?”

“Um, hi, Daisy,” Ford replied. Daisy was Helen’s eldest child, fourteen years old and already well-entrenched in that special brand of bitterness that only seemed to affect teenagers. Ford and Stan had only met her once, when Helen had stopped by to drop off a book she’d borrowed. While Daisy was the spitting image of her mother physically, the similarities stopped there. Daisy did not make eye contact, and when she did, you could see the boredom and the impatience, a stark contrast to her mother’s kind warmth and understanding. She didn’t talk much, except to make non-committal grunting noises when asked a question. 

Helen seemed oddly at ease with her daughter’s anti-social tendencies, and didn’t push her to interact. Ford decided to do the same. “It’s Dr. Pines,” he said briskly. “Is your mom around?”

“Hang on,” Daisy replied. He heard rustling in the background, and then Daisy’s muffled shouting. He heard something about “the weird science guy” being on the phone. 

After a moment, he heard Helen’s familiar harried footsteps, and her quietly telling Daisy, “He can hear you, ya know.”

There was more rustling, and suddenly Helen’s bright voice filled the void. “Hello, Ford. What’s up?”

“Hi,” he said, a sudden feeling of excitement coursing through him. It reminded him of being back in college, when he stumbled upon something that suddenly made an entire complicated lesson make sense. He was going to get his answers very soon. “So, Helen, I’ve got a problem. I need to know about a certain drug, and the only medical journal I have seems to be missing.”

“Ah, I see how you are,” Helen said, a playful edge in her voice. “You only need me for my brilliant medical expertise. And here I thought this was just going to be a friendly chat.” She let out a sad sigh, and added, “I thought we were friends.”

Ford rolled his eyes. Through some strange magic, Helen said, “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Stanford Pines. I know that huffy sigh people make when they do that.”

“Tell Daisy she’s ruined me, would you?”

Helen chuckled softly and said, “So, what’s this drug you need to identify?”

Ford fished the bottle back out of his pocket, and said, “It’s called Elavil. E-L-A-V-I-L.”

“Well, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“The patent expired for Elavil years ago, so it was discontinued. It hasn’t been sold in about three years.”

“What is it, though?”

“It was a brand name for amitriptyline. It was mostly used as an anti-depressant,” she replied, so matter-of-factly. She couldn’t even know that this one bit of news had made Ford’s mouth go dry. Why did Stan have antidepressants? What did he need them for? Stan wasn’t depressed. Was he?

“It was around for a long time, too,” she continued, utterly unaware that Ford was panicking on the other end. “Almost twenty years. I was still in medical school when it first came out on the market. It was generally considered the best treatment option you could get.”

Ford swallowed, even though his throat had gone as dry as kindling. “Do people still use it,” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Helen replied casually, “there’s still generic versions available. There’s been a lot of push for different medications with all the mental health reform going on, and lots of research is being done, but for the time being, people still use it.”

Ford didn’t respond for a moment. He was still trying to wrap his head around all this. He tried to think if he’d ever gotten an impression that Stan might be depressed. He certainly didn’t seem that way. He wasn’t sad all the time. In fact, after Helen had given him a clean bill of health after the pneumonia and AIDS scare, he’d been downright exuberant. There was talk of going back to school for his GED and then Ripley had come along and things had just been going so well. 

How on earth could Stan be depressed?

“Ford? Are you still there?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Ford said quickly, dragging himself away from his thoughts. 

“Why do you need to know about Elavil, anyway,” Helen asked. “One of the gnomes feeling down?”

Ford forced a bit of a laugh and said, “No. I just…you know me - boundless curiosity and whatnot.”

Helen said nothing to this, so Ford asked, “So if Elavil is off the market, how would someone get it?”

“Well, there’s always going to be the possibility of people getting it through illegal means,” Helen said. Ford could hear the confusion in her voice. “That’s a problem with all prescription medication. You see it more with narcotics, but it can happen with antidepressants too, since their main function is to regulate brain chemicals.”

Ford gulped, his suspicions rising once more. But then Helen said, “Of course, there’s always the possibility someone might have holdover from when they were institutionalized. When I did my residency, it was at a hospital with a mental ward, and they gave it out like candy there.” 

Ford felt his stomach drop down to his feet. Helen continued, “A lot of people who were admitted there were given Elavil. It was a pretty sorry sight, but then those places always are. There’s been a lot of reform recently, but it’s still pretty bad. At least that rat Nixon managed to kick-start something good for this country before they ousted him, right?”

Ford merely mumbled a “yeah”. 

What he was thinking couldn’t be true. Stan couldn’t have spent time in one of those awful places. Could he? 

If it was so obvious he was a drug addict a few moments ago, it wasn’t too much of a logical leap to think maybe he’d spent time in a mental hospital. Oh god, he felt sick…

“Ford?” Helen’s voice cut through the fog in his head slightly. “You okay? Do you need to talk?”

Suddenly, there was shouting on the other end of the phone, and Ford heard Helen sigh. “Ford, I have to go,” she said. “Scott and Amanda are fighting again. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

Ford murmured another affirmative and said goodbye. Then the line went dead. 

He hung the phone back in its cradle, and found himself staring off at nothing. He limply noticed that he was still clutching the pill bottle. He suddenly wanted to throw it away, burn it, run it over with the Stanleymobile. Anything to get it away from him, and with it, the horrible implications it carried.

\-----------------------

He lays in the simple cot, the thread-bare blanket pulled tightly around his shoulders, but he does not sleep. He can’t. There’s too much noise around him.

It’s different from the kind of noise you hear when you’re trying to catch catnap in your car and hear stray cats rooting through the garbage, or the honk of a car horn, or a drunk couple necking and pawing at each other in the nearby alley. 

These are tormented sounds. Terrifying sounds. Sounds of pain and confusion and desperation, all rolled into one awful keen that echoes through these sterile white hallways. 

He doesn’t think he can endure this for six months. That’s how long the doctor in the starched white coat told him he’d be here. They had to make sure he wasn’t a danger to society or himself anymore. They want to help him, the doctor said. 

It’s only been a week.

He fails to see how a place like this can help anyone. 

Another wail trips down the hall, this one sad and mourning. A sound so reminiscent of death. He will die here too. He will die because he cannot sleep, and his body will turn on him and shut down. 

It almost seems tempting. 

He looks over his shoulder, on the bedside table, with the rounded corners (for his own good, the doctor said). There’s a little paper cup there. It was brought with dinner, by a different nurse than Mildred. This one was young, pale, pretty. Too pretty for a place like this. She smiled and said hello and her hands were so very gentle when she picked up his arm to change his bandages. Her nametag said Daphne. She didn’t say anything about the bruises and raised red welts that certainly wouldn’t come from getting stitches as she secured the fresh bandages with tape. 

That close, he could see how tired her eyes are. He recognized it from catching his own face in the mirror every now and then. 

Daphne couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.

She was too young to look so tired. Just like him.

After she changed the bandages, she set the little paper cup on the nightstand, told him to take what was in it, it would make him feel better, and then left. 

He had not taken what was in the little paper cup. Had been afraid to look and see what it contained.

Now, what is outside his door scares him even more. 

He turns over completely and reaches out to it. Even in the darkness, the only light provided by moonlight through the barred window close to the ceiling, he can see two pink pills. They kind of look like sprinkles.

They’ll make you feel better, Daphne had said. 

Before he has a chance to think better of it, he puts the cup to his mouth and tips it back. He swallows the pills dry, feels them slither down, down, down his throat. 

He settles back into the bed, on his back, lying on his back to stare at the ceiling, and waits. Waits to feel better. He does his best to ignore the grunts and the wails and the cries. He doesn’t know what time it is, but surely it must be too late for these noises to continue. Doesn’t anyone here ever sleep?

He doesn’t know how much time has gone by when his eyelids start to feel heavy. He vaguely realizes that the sounds are growing muffled. His ears have been stuffed with cotton, by a merciful hand that has decided he deserves some rest. The world is spinning, but he doesn’t care. If anything, it feels soothing. 

Like a baby being rocked in its cradle, he drifts off to sleep.

He doesn’t wake until one o’clock the next afternoon.

\--------------------------

Stan woke up to the sound of scratching at his door, and a soft whine. He chanced a look over at his bedside clock. It was 5:30. God, he’d slept the day away. 

He turned his head to the source of the whining and scratching and saw Ripley, dancing around in circles and occasionally pawing at the door, silently begging to be let out. 

Stan grumbled, but was grateful for the distraction. It was better than laying there, once again being haunted by nightmares of that horrible place. 

He pulled himself up and stumbled over to the door, his footsteps still tottery with awkward sleep. Ripley whined a little loud with each step he took. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “I’m coming. Gimme a break, would ya? After I poured my heart and soul out to you, you’d think you’d have a little patience.”

Ripley, of course, only whined louder and scratched at the door again. As soon as Stan turned the knob and opened it, she was out like a shot. As he stepped out into the hall, he could hear her running to the entranceway. He didn’t know what her hurry was. There was another door there he had to open. 

He turned the corner around the stairs, and almost ran right into Ford. 

The two brothers stared at each other for a while, not a word passing between them. The only thing that managed to break them out of their stupor was a desperate bark from Ripley as she scratched at the front door. 

Stan grunted and moved past Ford to get to the door. He turned the knob and Ripley was off once more, bounding down the porch steps and into the yard. Stan made to follow her, when Ford spoke up. “Stan,” he said, “I need to talk about what happened -”

“I don’t wanna hear it, Sixer,” Stan muttered, stepping outside. It was unseasonably warm out, to the point where his terrycloth robe was enough to keep him warm against the colder breezes. The sun was beginning to go down, and made it chillier, so he stuck his hands under his arms to keep them warm. 

As he waited for Ripley to finish her business, Ford stepped beside him. “I know you don’t want to hear it,” he said, “but I need to tell it to you anyway, so just listen. You don’t even have to look at me while I talk, just hear me out.”

Stan didn’t take his eyes off Ripley as she ran about the yard, poking her nose in whenever she could fit it. It was amazing that she’d had to go so bad she could barely wait, but now that she was out here, she had all the time in the world. 

“I…I called Helen about the pill bottle,” Ford said abruptly. “Since you wouldn’t tell me, I figured she would know. And she did.”

“And what did she tell you it was, genius?”

“…an antidepressant. One that hasn’t been around since 1979.” Out of the corner of his eye, Stan saw Ford deflate a little. He puffed himself up a little, which he saw made Ford’s brow furrow in annoyance. “I’m glad I could make you feel good about yourself at my expense.”

“Hey, don’t get all pissy with me,” Stan said. He still did not look at his brother. “You totally brought this on yourself. You were the one who didn’t want to believe me when I said that I wasn’t doing any drugs or nothing like that.”

Ford shrank a bit. “I know,” he said. He looked down at his feet. “And I’m sorry. I acted like an idiot.”

“I need that printed on a t-shirt,” Stan muttered. 

“Stan…”

“What? I mean it,” Stan said, finally turning his gaze to his twin. His eyes were earnest, and they made Ford shrink even more. “You just have this weird habit of getting all worked up about stuff, screaming in people’s faces about it, and then realizing you acted dumb way too late. You always end up with egg on your face. I figure, if I get it on a shirt, it might remind you to check yourself before it happens again.”

Ford looked back down at the ground. “I know,” he said miserably. “That’s three times in a ten year period I’ve gotten angry at you for something stupid and screwed everything up because of it. I’m sorry, Stan.”

Stan sighed, and said, “At least this time, you were doing it out of brotherly concern.”

Ford shook his head, and said, “That still doesn’t excuse the way I acted. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. I should have at least let you explain yourself, or accepted the fact you didn’t want to. I just…”

He trailed off, seeming to be reaching for the right words. Stan gave him a moment to try and find them. 

“I guess,” Ford finally managed to say, “that I was scared about finding out about more of the stuff you went through. I saw that pill bottle and it just…it was all too real for a while. I know that makes me sound really selfish, not wanting to hear about parts of your life just because they make me feel like a bad person, but that doesn’t stop the fact that it happened. It was anger borne of fear, Stan, and I’m sorry.”

Stan didn’t respond for a moment, and he could feel Ford watching him anxiously. He let that explanation float around in his head for a while, and surprisingly, he could see where Ford was coming from. He’d told his brother stories about Colombian prisons and biker gangs and his antics with Rick doing God only knew what, but he wasn’t surprised Ford felt a disconnect from those events Stan described to him. You could be shocked and appalled by someone having to endure tragedy, but until you endured something similar yourself, you could never truly know what it felt like.

What Stan had gone through in 1973 was as singular an experience as what had happened with Ford and that Cipher bastard who’d ruined his sense of safety and well-being. He supposed the pill bottle was what gave Ford some sort of connection to that mental hospital Stan had spent six months in, and he could understand how that would be horrifying.

In that moment, he didn’t envy his brother at all.

“I get what you mean, Ford,” he finally said, his voice quiet and serious. “I actually do understand where you’re coming from with this.”

He saw the tension in Ford’s shoulders lessen a little, but there was still a look on his face that screamed for answers. If he’d found out exactly what had been in that pill bottle from Helen, he’d have a pretty good idea of why he had it. 

As a gentle breeze blew hair out of his face, Stan said, “I was in that place for six months.”

Ford glanced over at him, and Stan could see the barely restrained interest on his face. There was no morbidity or enthusiasm in the look. Simply a desire to understand, even a little beyond what that pill bottle had planted in his head.

“It was 1973, and I’d been away from home for a year. Things really weren’t going well. I don’t know why things just seemed so much worse that night. Maybe it was because I was stuck in Idaho with no gas in the tank and not enough money to get out. Whatever it was, it was enough to get me to slice open my arm with a broken beer bottle.” He tried to ignore the look of horror that flashed across Ford’s face. If he did look at his brother’s face now, etched with worry and care as it was, he’d never be able to finish. “Some beat cop found me when he tapped on my window with his flashlight. I was illegally parked, ya know.” He tried to force a laugh, but it didn’t come.

“They must have found the bottle in my hand. I don’t really remember a whole lot about that night. Lost a lot of blood. When I came to, I was in the hospital, and the doctors were all treating me like a freaking nuclear weapon about to go off. I was a ‘suicide risk’, I heard them say. It’s funny, because, as fuzzy as that night is, I can clearly remember that I never actually made the decision to die. I just did it. I’m not even sure I was aware of what might happen.”

Ripley, having finally done her duty, came trotting back up the steps, and sat next to Stan’s feet, her tongue lolling out as she waited for pets for a job well done. Stan absentmindedly obliged her, and continued. “They finally put me in the loony bin about a week later. That’s when they started me on those meds. Said it would make it so I wouldn’t be a danger to myself or anyone else. I’d be a ‘productive member of society’, if I just remembered to take my meds. I learned pretty fast that that place wasn’t about productivity. It was just a place to keep people like me and anyone worse from walking the streets and being a nuisance.” 

“What do you mean?” Ford’s voice actually shocked Stan a little. He’d been so caught up in his own monologue that he’d almost forgotten his brother was there. 

“I mean that this place was exactly like every scary story about mental institutions every written. Actually, it was a little worse, because it just looked so respectable. The place was so white and so clean. It smelled like it was saturated with bleach every day. But at night, and in places where nobody could see, it got bad. I heard screaming and groans, and it kept me up at night.”

He saw another look of horror flash over Ford’s face, and he addressed it quickly. “I never got anything too bad. Got jerked around a few times, smacked once by an orderly who didn’t like the way I was looking at him. Got called a crazy hippy more times than I can count. But mostly, they just kept me nice and medicated. I sat around like a lump all day, my head in this weird fog. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and the staff liked it that way. I didn’t ‘create a disturbance’ when I could barely turn my head. But there were other people in that ward who weren’t so lucky. They had this thing, shock therapy, they called it…”

He trailed off for a minute, noticing Ford nodding sagely beside him. He’d obviously heard about it. That gave Stan a minute to pretend to clear his throat, gathering his thoughts and hoping he didn’t get too upset about what he was about to describe. Once again, he found himself anxious for a cigarette. “There was this one guy, Potts, every day he gave the orderlies and nurses some kind of trouble. He’d pick fights, make messes, refuse to take his meds, all kinds of stuff. Then, one day, he isn’t in the day room. Nobody really notices until he’s wheeled in that afternoon. He’s got this far away look in his eyes, and he’s drooling a little. There were whispers for the rest of the day how the doctors finally got tired of him and shocked the shit right out of him. For a few days, he didn’t even remember his name when you asked.”

He stopped again, composing himself. He hated thinking about Potts. The guy was a dick, sure, but just thinking about him, sitting in that wheelchair, positioned so he was looking out at the big open field behind the institution, his mouth hanging open, his eyes glassy and distant…it made Stan want to curl up in a ball and make pathetic noises for a few hours. 

“So what happened?” Ford asked after a few minutes. 

Stan sighed quietly and said, “I stayed in that fog until my six months were up. The doctors gave me a prescription and told me to take care of myself. And that was it. Pretty sure that place ain’t around anymore. Good riddance, I say.”

“What about the pills? Why did you still have the bottle?”

“I told you the truth when I said that I hadn’t taken those pills in a long time. Probably since about 1975. I found I liked the fog they kept me in. It was hard to notice how shitty things were when I felt like I wasn’t even really there experiencing it. Sure, it wasn’t exactly healthy, but I got myself through some bad stuff while those things were working their magic on me.”

Stan was grateful when Ford didn’t ask him to elaborate. He didn’t really feel like talking about Jimmy and how he kept him wrapped around his little finger for a whole damn year. Which, he supposed now, was also thanks to those damn pills. 

It was all complicated, and he just didn’t have the energy to go any further. 

“Why did you finally stop?” 

Stan snorted out a small laugh. He remembered Rick finding the bottle, stored in his glove box. He remembered Rick, who drank like a fucking fish and occasionally snorted some weird pink dust that made him feel like he needed to dance or die, asking him what the hell these were, and why was he still taking them, was this why he acted all sluggish and weird sometimes? He remembered Rick dumped them into the river they’d parked by, and how he’d nearly thrown the bottle in after them, only stopped because Stan decked him right in the jaw and they had tumbling fight right there on the cold pavement. He remembered Rick, after they’d ended up making out in the middle of the damn fight, then quickly making love in the backseat of his car, mumbling to him how Stan didn’t need that stuff. He was strong without it. He remembered Rick repeating that mantra to him the entire time he enduring the withdrawals from those pills.

Stan simply said, “I had some help from a friend.”

Ford nodded. 

By now, the sun had set completely, and the air grew colder. The brothers could see their breath coming out in clouds of steam in front of their faces. 

Ford spoke first, “I’m sorry. About everything,” he said.

“So am I,” Stan replied. 

More silence.

Fortunately, this one was broken by Ripley, who let out a short, demanding bark, and began to trot back into the house. Stan looked over his shoulder and watched her leave. “I think that means she’s hungry,” he said, turning to follow her. “Can’t say I blame her. All this waxing nostalgic is making me hungry.”

Ford smirked a little, began walking behind Stan, and said, “Same. I could go for a pizza.”

“Sounds good,” Stan said. “Maybe throw in a beer. Or eight.”

Ford laughed. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Don’t let me forget to call Helen tomorrow. I think I freaked her out earlier with those questions about the pill bottle.”

“That poor woman,” Stan said as they reached the kitchen. He opened the cabinets above the stove and pulled out the bag of Ripley’s dog food. She yipped excitedly and began prancing around his feet. Stan deftly avoided stepping on her. “As if she doesn’t have enough to worry about with that weird teenager of hers.”

“Hey, don’t be mean to Daisy,” Ford said playfully. He walked over to the refrigerator and opened it, pulling out a fresh six-pack of beer from their last trip to the store. “It’s not like she’s any less well-adjusted than we were. Hell, look at the conversation we just had.”

Stan took on a look of brief contemplation as he grabbed the measuring cup to fill full of dog food. “Okay,” he said, “good point. I’m sure Helen looks at us and thanks God almighty that her kid is a mute.”

Ford snapped a beer off the plastic ring and tossed it to Stan, saying, “With any luck, she’ll stay that way too. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that your teen years are awful, and if you can get through them without being thrown out of the house or turning into a giant ass, you’ve pretty much got it made.” He pulled off a beer of his own, set the remaining ones on the counter, and popped the tab. 

Stan popped open his own, lifted it a bit, and said, “I’ll drink to that.”

They tapped the cans together, and both took a hearty drink.


End file.
